Readybot’s mission: to build a robot that can clean a kitchen.

SciVestor took a tour of the Robotics Pavilion at National Instruments’ NI Week 2008.  Anu Saha, NI marketing manager discusses academic and corporate partnerships that feature LabView and CompactRIO technologies.

What has become a milestone in the evolutionary timeline of robotic market development, iRobot sued its former competitor Robotic FX to death last year.  At the center of the battle was the Robotic FX version of a robot called The Negotiator which allegedly violated U.S. Patents 6,263,989 and 6,431,296 that relate to robot platform and [...]

Touch Bionics, developer of the world’s first commercially available bionic hand, announced that the i-LIMB Hand has won a 2008 da Vinci Award from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
The da Vinci Awards recognize the most innovative developments and research in adaptive and assistive technology. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society understands well the difficulties people [...]

iRobot Negotiator Provides a Cost-Effective, Basic Reconnaissance Robot to Public Safety Organizations
Bedford, Mass., August 6, 2008 – iRobot Corp. (Nasdaq: IRBT) today announced the introduction of the iRobot Negotiator, a low-cost tactical robot designed to meet the basic reconnaissance needs of public safety professionals.
After the success of the company’s iRobot PackBot 510, iRobot heard from [...]

If iRobot is a bellwether for the future of personal robotics, then the market is not just hype.  iRobot’s second quarter revenue increased 43% over the same time last year with profits totaling $16.5M, or about 24% of Q2’s $67.2M revenue.
“In the second quarter we achieved our 16th consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth despite [...]